National Instruments now offers a new CompactPCI realtime control solution based on LabVIEW RT, the company's easy-to-use graphicalprogramming environment for development and deployment of embedded, realtime applications.
With LabVIEW RT, control systems engineers and systems integrators can now develop their realtime monitoring and control, high-speed data acquisition, process control and discrete control applications on a standard Windows PC. Then, they simply evoke a pull-down menu command that downloads their applications across an Ethernet network to run deterministically and reliably on a PXI/CompactPCI embedded controller.
Once downloaded to the PXI/CompactPCI embedded controller, LabVIEW RT applications access analog and digital I/O through National Instruments' data acquisition and signal conditioning modules plugged into the system chassis. This allows systems engineers and integrators to easily address their most demanding manufacturing and process control applications with a modular, industrially hardened platform that offers a wide variety of high-performance PXI/CompactPCI I/O modules; distributed, realtime execution; and headless operation. Human-machine interface (HMI), datalogging, analysis and supervisory control applications developed using LabVIEW RT or BridgeVIEW (LabVIEW for industrial automation) remotely handle communication and control of embedded LabVIEW RT applications across Ethernet.
National Instruments new compactPCI realtime control system is based on LabVIEW RT, the company's easy-to-use graphical programming environment for development and deployment of embedded realtime applications. With LabVIEW RT, control systems enginneers and systems intergrators can now develop their realtime monitoring and control aplications on a standard Windows PC, evoke a pull-down menu command and instantly download their applications across and Ethernet network to run deterministically on the CompactPCI embedded controller.
"With LabVIEW RT, systems engineers and integrators build realtime measurement and automation applications using industry-standard development tools. Now, they can target those applications to a PXI embedded controller or an RT series plug-in data acquisition board for PCI and PXI/CompactPCI," said Norma Dorst, National Instruments Realtime and Embedded Marketing Manager. "And there is more to come. National Instruments will continue to introduce scalable hardware platforms for LabVIEW RT and look to other technologies such as Windows CE and Windows NT embedded for embedded and portable measurement and automation solutions."
The PXI/CompactPCI controller designed for LabVIEW RT uses the same National Instruments computer technology used today in PXI/CompactPCI systems. Therefore, current PXI/CompactPCI system users can transform their existing Windows-based PXI/CompactPCI computer into a realtime embedded controller and achieve reliable, deterministic system performance with a LabVIEW RT upgrade. An embedded PXI/CompactPCI controller preinstalled with the LabVIEW RT realtime engine is also available.
For nearly 15 years, National Instruments has developed LabVIEW as an easy-to-use, reliable software package for creating computer-based measurement and automation solutions. Today, LabVIEW is an industry-standard graphical programming package used by thousands of engineers and scientists worldwide. Now, through LabVIEW RT, National Instruments is extending the simplicity of LabVIEW graphical programming for widespread development and deployment of realtime applications without requiring in-depth knowledge of realtime techniques or nonstandard computer systems.
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